Poconos Jazz Albums Popping Up All Over

The past few months have been especially good ones for some of the dozens of established jazz musicians who make the Poconos area of Northeastern Pennsylvania their home.

Starting late last year with pianist/vocalist Bob Dorough's major label release of "Right On My Way Home" (Blue Note), three other musicians who reside in the Poconos area have released recordings this year, making the first part of 1998 one of the most prolific seasons for recorded jazz by regional artists in recent memory.

Even the dean of Pocono-area jazz musicians, Phil Woods, the alto saxophonist who lives in Delaware Water Gap, got into the act. Woods and his Celebration of the Arts (COTA) Orchestra received a Grammy nomination earlier this year for "Celebration!" (Concord), a recording that featured music, mainly written by Woods, the orchestra performs each year during the fall COTA festival in Delaware Water Gap. Woods and the orchestra, a group of musicians who mainly live in the region, lost out to some very respectable competition, the Joe Henderson Big Band.

Dorough's release on Blue Note, arguably one of the most prestigious jazz labels in the United States, came out late last year. It was the result of months of negotiations between Dorough and the label's head, Bruce Lundvall.

"He and I have known about each other for years," Dorough says in his slight Arkansas twang. "My name has been around."

But it was two recent reissues, the Columbia collection of Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaborations, on which Dorough appears, and Dorough's own reissue of his classic "Schoolhouse Rock" recording, which, Dorough says, helped him land this record deal.

Lundvall "gave me a budget that allowed for this recording," Dorough says.

Included on the recording are two separate groups, one Dorough calls his Pennsylvania group (Dorough, long-time bassist Bill Takas and veteran session drummer Grady Tate) and his New York group (Dorough, saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Billy Hart, all established New York jazz musicians).

Half of the tunes feature Dorough's vocals. "I'm really known for my singing. That's what I do," says Dorough, who has the distinction of being the only vocalist ever to record with Miles Davis, the jazz legend. "Even when I do a concert or a nightclub gig, I generally sing practically every song. They (Blue Note) knew that, and that's what I did."

The music has a sly, witty quality to it, thanks largely to Dorough's voice and his lyrics. The tongue-in-cheek humor may remind some of another Blue Note artist, Mose Allison, although Dorough says his playing isn't as "serious" as Allison's.

Dorough's recording has several local connections. Chris Solliday, who owns Delaware Water Gap's Deer Head Inn and is also one of the region's most sought-after piano tuners, tuned Dorough's piano for the Pennsylvania group's recordings, six of the 10 cuts on the disc. This group's music also was recorded at Red Rock Studio in Saylorsburg, the studio of choice for many Poconos-area jazz players. Finally, the recording's producer was Bill Goodwin, the drummer for the Phil Woods quartet who has produced many of the recordings for the Woods group.

David Liebman, the saxophonist who lives in the Stroudsburg area, also released a recording earlier this year, "John Coltrane's Meditations" (Arkadia), from the late period of saxophone legend Coltrane and his "Meditations" suite. Coltrane first recorded it in 1965.

"I'm a Coltrane devotee, a student, really, and he was my main inspiration," says Liebman. "This particular piece of music, I feel, was a monumental work. It was the inauguration of what we have come to call the late period, or the free jazz period, of Coltrane."

Liebman's version of the suite was recorded in 1995 during a concert at New York City's Symphony Space and includes his regular ensemble players (Phil Markowitz on piano and keyboards, Vic Juris on guitar, Jamey Haddad on drums and percussion and Tony Marino on bass) as well as four guests: Billy Hart on drums, Cecil McBee on bass, Tiger Okoshi on trumpet and Liebman's wife, Caris Visentin, on oboe. Visentin also transcribed the original Coltrane recording, which Liebman used as a basis for his version.

As a younger man, Liebman had played (or tried to play) this Coltrane composition. "We all began playing free jazz. In the late sixties, that was what was going on. It took us a couple of years to realize what was really going on musically. After that, a lot of us became more conservative, musically. These days, you don't really hear people playing like that," says Liebman.

After seeing Visentin's transcription, Liebman added a few chords to the piece in places where they seemed to make sense, Liebman says.

"After looking at the transcriptions, I realized the melodies (on the original) were very, very lyrical and very simple, harmonically. This was a revelation because the music sounded so free and chaotic, but there was also a kind of nursery-rhyme quality to it."